Continued Growth for the Top 100

Despite setbacks, the printed products industry staged a good performance.

It was another big year for the Top 100 Manufacturers as total reported revenue climbed to $4.96 billion, up $580 million from last year's $4.38 billion.

The total number of employees reported by the Top 100 in-creased by 514 to 30,945 from last year's total of 30,431. The total number of locations increased to 423 from 384 last year.

It has been a more productive year as sales per employee jumped to $160,123 from the $143,843 reported a year ago. Sales per location also increased to $11.7 million from last year's $11.4 million.

The increase in overall revenue came despite the loss of Transkrit, last year's eighth largest manufacturer, which closed its doors several months ago. Although we had expected Moore's Latitudes to step in this year, that venture does not seem to be doing well.

New to this year's list is American Forms, Plano, Texas, which purchased the assets of CST/Star and has been operating for more than a year. Also new are Sovereign Business Forms, Houston and General Data, Cincinnati.

The $4.96 billion in sales breaks down into $1.48 billion in forms (30.3 percent), $689 million in labels (13.9 percent), $1.46 billion in commercial printing (29.4 percent), $268 million in direct mail (5.4 percent) and $1.06 billion in other products (21.4 percent). The "other products" category this year consists mainly of plastic cards, promotional products and office supplies.

The Large Get Larger

The overall Top 10 Manufacturers generated $3.09 billion in total sales and employed 18,287 people at 217 locations. This represents 62 percent of the overall Top 100 sales, 59 percent of total employees and 51 percent of the locations. Last year the Top 10 accounted for $2.78 billion in sales and employed 18,563 people at 188 locations.